The death penalty

Too young to die

The views of the rest of the world matter, too

THE United States is the only country in the world that officially sanctions the execution of juvenile offenders under the age of 18. Indeed, it is one of very few developed nations to retain the death penalty at all. In 1988, the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment for offenders under the age of 16 was unconstitutional. But the next year it determined that this did not apply to older juveniles. Now, just a decade and a half later, in a dramatic reversal, it has abolished the death penalty for all offenders whose crimes were committed when they were under 18, reprieving 72 juvenile offenders on death row.

No one doubts that the case on which the high court passed judgment this week involved a particularly cruel and callous murder. In 1993 Christopher Simmons, a high-school student from Missouri, broke with the help of a friend into a house where Shirley Crooks was asleep. He tied her up, wrapped her face in duct tape, then threw her, still alive, off a bridge into the river below.

Mr Simmons, then aged 17, bragged about the murder both before and afterwards. He was arrested the next day, confessed and was convicted nine months later. In mitigation, his defence counsel reminded the jurors that, in Missouri, juveniles of Mr Simmons's age could not drink, serve on juries, or even see certain types of film because “the legislatures have wisely decided that individuals of a certain age aren't responsible enough”. The jury nevertheless recommended the death penalty. After a series of unsuccessful appeals, it looked as if Mr Simmons had reached the end of the line.

But a judgment by the Supreme Court in 2002, prohibiting the execution of mentally retarded offenders as “cruel and unusual punishment”—banned under the eighth amendment—provided fresh opportunity for an appeal. In an echo of that earlier judgment, the Supreme Court refers to “evolving standards of decency” as justification for its ruling this week.

The trend towards the abolition of the juvenile death penalty at state level, said the court, provided sufficient evidence that society today regards all juveniles under the age of 18 as “categorically less culpable than the average criminal”. Although 20 of America's 50 states retain capital punishment for juvenile offenders, since 1976 only 22 such offenders have been executed. And although Americans overwhelmingly want to keep the death penalty for adults, polls suggest that some two-thirds are against it for juveniles.

But the court has sparked immediate controversy by admitting that its reinterpretation of the constitution was influenced at least in part by foreign laws and attitudes. “The overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty is not controlling here,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority, “but provides respected and significant confirmation [of the ruling].”

This prompted an angry minority dissent, read by Justice Antonin Scalia, the leading conservative on the bench and a possible successor to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is ill. “Though the views of our own citizens are essentially irrelevant to the court's decision today, the views of other countries and the so-called international community take centre stage,” he raged. “The basic premise of the court's argument—that American law should conform to the laws of the rest of the world—ought to be rejected out of hand.”